Stuff and Nonsense
by christyedna
Summary: Post


TITLE: Stuff and Nonsense

AUTHOR: christyedna

RATING: PG for language, nothing a fifth grader won't know

SPOILERS: Walk Like A Man 

ARCHIVE: I'll most likely give permission if you ask. If you don't, and I find out, then whatever happens to you as a result is your fault. (Do you really wanna mess with someone who believes in the Law of Three?)

DISCLAIMER: I'll claim to have written this and I'll claim to have whined about writer's block, but I'm not gonna dare claim to own Carter or Abby or anything else related to the show. I don't want Michael Crichton to sue me and be too busy to work on ER, so I'm going to state plainly: This was done for my entertainment and Mel's. If you happen to like it, I guess it was meant for your entertainment as well.

FEEDBACK: If I don't get any, you don't get any (more fic, that is). My livejournal username is christyedna and my AIM SN is ThisIsEdnaB. My web page is http://www.stormpages.com/christyedna (you can get my email from there; I get enough spam as it is).

"disobey my own decisions

I deserve all your suspicions

First it's yes and then it's no

I dilly-dally down to duo

But I've got more secrets that I battle in my sleep

I won't make promises to you that I can't keep"

-as sung by eddie vedder

--

  I stood there for what felt like hours, waiting for her to come up the sidewalk. Finally the moment came when she made her way off the train and to her front door. My only hope was that she didn't see me standing in that rain-soaked tree like some lovesick high school kid.

  I tried to be casual as I followed her. "You should have your keys already out." She spun around and pulled her hand from her pocket. "You never know who might be lurking." She looked me right in the eye and I froze. This wasn't going to be easy. "Look, the drinking... The drinking is the drinking. You know where I stand on that." By now I'd made my way up the sidewalk and was looking up at her, hoping she'd let me finish instead of blowing me off. "It's just, how far are we going to go if we keep hiding from each other?" This better be making sense. I knew I was standing there babbling like an idiot, but I've wanted her like this for so long and I'll be damned if I ruin it after a month.

  Abby sighed and moved down a couple of steps. She was still looking down on me like she didn't know whether or not to ask me to leave. "I won't hide anymore," she finally said, and my heart swelled.

  We would have said more if the El hadn't sped by at that moment. I mentally asked myself how she managed to sleep with all that noise every night. But back to the subject at hand, I concluded, thinking of how the El had brought us to this point, to her doorstep in the damp night air. "I didn't mean to leave that way," I offered. I could tell she was thinking about it too, the way she kept fidgeting. "It just seemed kind of complicated and I wanted a little time to figure out where we were." 

  She stepped down to my eye level and stared at me for a second. "Here we are," she said simply. A couple of more seconds went by and she looked away quickly, then gave me a hopeful smile. 

  We stood there for a little longer, then out of nowhere the sky opened up and it started to pour like hell. It was like a scene from a Dawson's Creek episode I'd seen when I was an RA, the one where Dawson had read Joey's diary and she spent the entire episode mad at him. 'Dawson,' I thought, 'I feel for you buddy.'

  I snapped back to reality when I saw Abby lower her head and sigh deeply. I raised my eyes to look at her again and she asked in a monotone, "Can we go in now?"

  I hummed a reply and followed her through the front door and into her kitchen, where she turned on the burner under a pot of water. Nothing like a hot beverage to put things in perspective.

  "What kind of tea do you like?" Abby asked, rifling through a kitchen drawer and extracting a spoon like thing that resembled a set of forceps. 

  "There's different kinds?"

  She pulled open a cabinet and rattled off a list. "Green tea, black tea, Tension Tamer, Wild Berry Zinger, apple Ceylon, jasmine, peppermint, ginger or chamomile." 'Jesus,' I thought. "Or there's English Breakfast or this chai, I haven't tried that yet." She turned to face me while she waited for my answer. 

  "Surprise me," I answered. I didn't know one kind from the other. I sat down while she got down two huge stoneware mugs, then pulled a carton of milk from the refrigerator. Finally she reached a stopping point, or at least a place where I wouldn't feel like I was interrupting her. "Abby-"

  "I'm not trying to dodge it, I promise," she said before I could finish. "You want to know where we are."

  I pulled a napkin from the holder and folded it into a square, then a triangle. I was about to work on a paper airplane when Abby stopped me. She put her hand on mine and waited for me to look up at her. Her skin was cool from the mugs and the kitchen had begun to take on an herbal smell. "We're not in a bad place, Carter. We're going to work through this." 

  I closed my eyes because I didn't want to have to see her reaction to what I wanted to say. "Did you mean what you said outside?"

  "About not hiding anymore?" I nodded, and Abby squeezed my hand. "I did." 

  "Did you mean everything before too?" I sighed and looked up at her. "Because if this happens again I don't know it we'll make it." 

  "I should have seen this coming," Abby replied. Her voice was low and she sounded hurt. I felt like a jerk for upsetting herm but I had to say it. "I don't need anyone else to judge me. You of all people should know that." The teakettle started to whistle just then and she practically ripped the knob off the stove trying to turn the burner off. "I told you, I'm controlling myself just fine. If you don't believe me, Susan will-" She pulled her hand back suddenly and dropped the kettle. It clattered to the floor as she blew on her burned skin. She wasn't careful of where she was moving as she tried to get to the sink, and stepped right in the puddle of boiling-hot water on the floor. "Son of a bitch," she hissed.

  I got up and walked around the mess on the floor so I could look at her foot. She had sunk into a kitchen chair, crying out of frustration while she waved her red fingers in the air to cool them. I knelt down in front of her, then peeled off her sock carefully. Her toes were a little warm but she'd be all right. I rubbed my thumbs over her ankle to try and calm her down. "You want some ice?" I ventured. I didn't expect what was coming.

  "Maybe it would be better if you went home. I don't feel up to fighting tonight." 

  I probably deserved that. "Abby, I'm not trying to fight with you." I sat there on her kitchen floor, about five inches from a puddle of hot water, but I didn't care. I'd made her cry and now I had to fix that. 

  "You had me fooled," she answered, and I swear I heard bitterness in her voice. "But I don't want to fight, you're right about that."

  "Before I went to Atlanta, I thought people were judging me too," I explained. In all the months she'd been my sponsor, I'd never told her any of this. "But while I was away I figured out that a lot of people were just really worried." I stood up then because my pants were getting wet, and I sat in a chair next to hers. I took hold of her wrist and kissed each one of her burned fingers. "There comes a point where you have to let someone care, and I want to be that someone for you. I've wanted to be that someone for a long time." She looked right at me just then without the 'I-want-to-deck-you' look in her eyes, so I kept talking. "You don't have any idea how much I worry about you."

  "I told you, I can control-"

  I put my finger over her lips just then, and kept talking. "It's not the kind of worry where I judge you," I explained. "It's more like my guts are in a knot every time I think about you hurting yourself. I know you don't think you're doing anything wrong. I just want to know how seriously you've thought about it."

  "You'd be surprised," she said quietly. "That's why I went that whole week without drinking anything. I was worried I might be losing control." I watched in silence while she wiped at her eyes with her free hand. "Don't think I don't get scared of falling off the wagon." She stood up and left the kitchen, then returned a few seconds later with a towel, which she spread over the puddle on the floor. 

  "Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.

  She stood in front of me with her hands on her hips. "I just did."

  "I guess you did," I answered. I picked up her good hand then - I needed to touch her somehow. "Are you really mad at me?" I asked.

  "I don't know," Abby answered, squeezing her eyes shut. "I don't want to be."

  "I could have told you that," I said. I smiled at her and waited for her to say something. When she didn't, I decided to find out myself. "Can you forgive me for telling Susan?" 

  She sat down again and pulled her chair close to mine, so our knees were touching. "I don't like it that you told her the way you did. I should have been the one to do that. But you were right to do it." She looked at her hands for a second, then back at me. "I'm sorry I'm not more open to you, Carter. I'll work on it."

  I picked up her hands and held them tightly. "No," I said. She got the deer in the headlights look, and I smiled because it looked cute on her. "We'll work on it. There's no reason for either of us to change overnight. We're not going to appreciate waking up tomorrow and having to do a one eighty." She looked a little confused and I kept going. "The best thing about you and me is that we make each other better people." 

  God, I thought, I've got it bad. I sound like a Hallmark card. Then again, I care enough to... Yeah.

  I smiled at Abby. "Make sense?"

  She was crying again, but she nodded. I stood up to give her a hug, I couldn't figure out what in the world had upset her this time. "What's wrong?"

  She stood back and looked up at me. She tried to wipe her eyes, but I took her hand away. I used my thumb to swipe tears from her cheek, then raised my hand to lick them away. Finally she spoke. 

  "I was really afraid we wouldn't be standing here like this. I didn't think we'd resolve it, and I'm relieved." 

  I pulled he tighter to me and kissed the top of her head. God, she smelled good. "Abby," I whispered, "If it was going to end, it would have to be for something way bigger than this. You'd have to drown at least three kittens for me to think about it right now." She smiled back, so I kissed her.

  We're going to be okay, I know it.

---

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I sent this to Mel ages ago. Ages. It's been sitting in my Hotmail for I don't know how long. I'm tired of knowing it's there and not posted, so I'm posting it.


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